Listen to Iggy & The Stooges’ New Album Ready to Die — Online For a Limited Time

in Music | April 25th, 2013

It’s prob­a­bly fair to say that Iggy Pop is the Kei­th Richards of punk. He’d prob­a­bly hate the com­par­i­son, but giv­en his super­hu­man sur­vival skills in an are­na that turns less­er mor­tals to mush, it seems apt. And now, at 66 years old, Pop and the remain­ing Stooges—James Williamson, Scott Asheton, and the great Mike Watt (replac­ing Ron Asheton)—have released a new album, their first since 2007’s The Weird­ness.

Unlike the Stones, The Stooges don’t rest on their lau­rels. Lis­ten to “Burn” above and tell me this isn’t as raw pow­er as Raw Pow­er. Pop’s voice has deep­ened con­sid­er­ably, his youth­ful machis­mo tem­pered into apoc­a­lyp­tic doom­say­ing. But he’s still got the cocked-hip grav­i­tas and full-frontal gri­mace that car­ried him through well over three decades of boom-bust-boom rock swag­ger. Wan­na hear more? Lucky for you, NPR streams the full album, Ready to Die, this week. Lis­ten to it below and be awed.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

From The Stooges to Iggy Pop: 1986 Doc­u­men­tary Charts the Rise of Punk’s God­fa­ther

Cre­ative Uses of the Fax Machine: From Iggy Pop’s Bile to Stephen Hawking’s Snark

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Hear the Voice of Alexander Graham Bell for the First Time in a Century

in History, Technology | April 25th, 2013

In the past, we’ve brought you sound record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry — record­ings that recap­ture the long lost voic­es of fig­ures likes Walt Whit­man, Alfred Lord Ten­nyson, William Glad­stone, Tchaikovsky, and Thomas Edi­son. Now, thanks to the “dra­mat­ic appli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy,” the Smith­son­ian brings you (quite fit­ting­ly) the lost voice of the tele­phone’s inven­tor, Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell. Accord­ing to biog­ra­ph­er Char­lotte Gray, Bell record­ed his voice onto discs while con­duct­ing sound exper­i­ments between 1880 and 1886. Although the discs remained in the Smith­so­ni­an’s pos­ses­sion for decades, researchers lacked the tech­ni­cal abil­i­ty to play them back, and Bel­l’s voice went “mute” until Carl Haber, a sci­en­tist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, fig­ured out how to take high res­o­lu­tions scans of the discs and con­vert them into playable audio files. That’s what you can hear below. In the short record­ing dat­ed April 15, 1885, the inven­tor declares: “Hear my voice — Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell.”

H/T Mal­colm; audio via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edi­son Recites “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in Ear­ly Voice Record­ing

Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

in Books, History | April 25th, 2013

Like so many dai­ly comestibles we com­plete­ly take for grant­ed—salt, sug­ar, and (far few­er of us) tobac­co—cof­fee has a long and often bru­tal his­to­ry. And like many of these sub­stances, it tends to be addic­tive. But cof­fee has also inspired a long­stand­ing social tra­di­tion that shows no signs of ever going out of fash­ion. It’s a drug that makes us thinky and chat­ty and socia­ble (I for one don’t speak a human lan­guage until I’ve had my first cup). It’s these con­tra­dic­tions of cof­fee history—its com­plic­i­ty in slave economies and the Enlight­en­ment pub­lic square—that Mark Pen­der­grast takes on in his new book Uncom­mon Grounds: The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World. Pen­der­grast puts it this way:

One of the ironies about cof­fee is it makes peo­ple think. It sort of cre­ates egal­i­tar­i­an places — cof­fee­hous­es where peo­ple can come togeth­er — and so the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion were planned in cof­fee­hous­es. On the oth­er hand, that same cof­fee that was fuel­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion was also being pro­duced by African slaves who had been tak­en to San­to Domin­go, which we now know as Haiti.

In the inter­view above with NPR’s “Morn­ing Edi­tion,” Pen­der­grast explains his inter­est in cof­fee his­to­ry as a way to look at the “rela­tion­ship between the have-nots and the haves.” His inves­ti­ga­tion is anoth­er for­ay into the hun­dreds of years of Euro­pean colo­nial his­to­ry that gave us both mas­sive glob­al inequal­i­ty and Star­bucks on every cor­ner. Lis­ten to the short inter­view, read Pendergrast’s book, and the next time you get thinky over cof­fee, you may just think a lot about how cof­fee shaped the world.

H/T Kim L.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

David Lynch Explains How Meditation Enhances Our Creativity

in Creativity, Film, Psychology | April 25th, 2013

David Lynch med­i­tates, and he med­i­tates hard. Begin­ning his prac­tice in earnest after it helped him solve a cre­ative prob­lem dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of his break­out 1977 film Eraser­head, he has con­tin­ued med­i­tat­ing assid­u­ous­ly ever since, going so far as to found the David Lynch Foun­da­tion for Con­scious­ness-Based Edu­ca­tion and Peace and pub­lish a pro-med­i­ta­tion book called Catch­ing the Big Fish.

It might seem non­sen­si­cal to hear an artist of the grotesque like Lynch speak rap­tur­ous­ly about voy­ag­ing into his own con­scious­ness, let alone in his frac­tured all-Amer­i­can, askew-Jim­my-Stew­art man­ner, but he does med­i­tate for a prac­ti­cal rea­son: it gives him ideas. Only by med­i­tat­ing, he says, can he dive down and catch the “big fish” he uses as ingre­di­ents in his inim­itable film, music, and visu­al art. You can hear more of his thoughts on med­i­ta­tion, con­scious­ness, and cre­ativ­i­ty in his nine-minute speech above.

If you’d like to hear more, the video just above offers a near­ly two-hour pre­sen­ta­tion at UC Berke­ley with Lynch as its star. You’ll also hear from out­spo­ken quan­tum physi­cist John Hagelin and Fred Travis, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Brain, Con­scious­ness and Cog­ni­tion Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment. Some of what they say might make good sense to you: after all, we could all use a method to clear our minds so we can cre­ate what we need to cre­ate. Some of what they say might strike you as total non­sense. But if you feel tempt­ed to dis­miss all as too bizarre for seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, you might med­i­tate, as it were, on oth­er things Lynchi­an: back­wards-talk­ing dwarves, sev­ered ears on sub­ur­ban lawns, alien babies, women liv­ing in radi­a­tors, sit­com fam­i­lies in rab­bit suits. He’s cer­tain­ly pitched us weird­er con­cepts than med­i­ta­tion.

For some sec­u­lar intro­duc­tions to med­i­ta­tion, you may wish to try UCLA’s free guid­ed med­i­ta­tion ses­sions or check out the Med­i­ta­tion 101 ani­mat­ed beginner’s guide above. If you’re not too put off by the occa­sion­al Bud­dhist ref­er­ence, I would also high­ly rec­om­mend the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Center’s free six-part intro­duc­tion to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Physics of Mosh Pits at Heavy Metal Concerts (Explained by Cornell Grad Students)

in Physics | April 24th, 2013

Speak­ing at the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety last month, Matthew Bier­baum, a Cor­nell grad stu­dent, pre­sent­ed a talk called “Col­lec­tive Motion at Heavy Met­al Con­certs,” where he made the case that physics is every­where, even in a mosh pit at a heavy met­al show. Along with three oth­er Cor­nell researchers, Bier­baum has ana­lyzed and mod­eled the col­lec­tive motions of mosh­ers in var­i­ous YouTube con­cert videos (like the one below) and dis­cov­ered that “dancers col­lide with each oth­er ran­dom­ly and at a dis­tri­b­u­tion of speeds that resem­bles par­ti­cles in a two-dimen­sion­al gas,” writes Lau­ren Wolfe in Chem­i­cal & Engi­neer­ing News.

To try and under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing in mosh pits, the researchers used a flock­ing-based sim­u­la­tion that helps “mod­el liv­ing beings as sim­ple par­ti­cles, reduc­ing com­plex behav­ioral dynam­ics to a few basic rules,” says Itai Cohen, the head of the research team. From this study, the Cor­nell team hopes to learn more about how seem­ing­ly chaot­ic crowds behave, and how smarter exit routes and evac­u­a­tion strate­gies can be designed.

You can learn more about their research by perus­ing the team’s pub­lished paper “Col­lec­tive Motion of Mosh­ers at Heavy Met­al Con­certs” or by watch­ing Bier­baum’s afore­men­tioned pre­sen­ta­tion in the grainy video below below.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

The Physics of the Bike

Free Physics Cours­es Online

Kurt Cobain’s Isolated Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ 1991

in Music | April 23rd, 2013

In 1991, Nir­vana’s Nev­er­mind album explod­ed into main­stream pop­u­lar cul­ture like–as one writer describes it– “a grenade det­o­nat­ing in your car radio.” The album, and the Seat­tle-based grunge rock move­ment it emerged from, was like a boost­er shot of 70s punk atti­tude into heavy met­al, sweep­ing away the hedo­nism and van­i­ty of 80s bands like Qui­et Riot and Möt­ley Crüe. The song that epit­o­mized the new atti­tude, for many, was the open­ing track of Nev­er­mind, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” with its explo­sive expres­sion of youth­ful alien­ation:

With the lights out, it’s less dan­ger­ous
Here we are now, enter­tain us
I feel stu­pid and con­ta­gious
Here we are now, enter­tain us

The line “Here we are now, enter­tain us” was a joke Nir­vana’s gui­tarist and singer Kurt Cobain liked to call out to break the ice when­ev­er he would arrive at a par­ty. “A lot of times,” Cobain told Rolling Stone in a 1994 inter­view, “when you’re stand­ing around with peo­ple in a room, it’s real­ly bor­ing and uncom­fort­able. So it was ‘Well, here we are, enter­tain us.’ ”

The title of the song was tak­en from some­thing his friend Kath­leen Han­na, lead singer of Biki­ni Kill, had spray paint­ed across his wall: “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” Han­na meant that Cobain smelled like Teen Spir­it, a brand of deodor­ant worn by his girl­friend, but Cobain claimed not to know that until much lat­er. Instead, he saw irony and rebel­lion.

You can hear Cobain’s iso­lat­ed vocal track from “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” above.  The song was record­ed at Sound City stu­dios in Van Nuys, Cal­i­for­nia in May of 1991. The band report­ed­ly chose the sec­ond of three takes. The extreme dynam­ics of the performance–soft to loud, apa­thy to rage–were inspired by the music of the Pix­ies. To watch a video of Nir­vana try­ing out an ear­ly ver­sion of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” before an audi­ence at Seat­tle’s OK Hotel a month before the song was record­ed, see Josh Jones’s Decem­ber post, “The First Live Per­for­mance of Nir­vana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ (1991).”

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The Pix­ies “Acoustic Ses­sions”: See the Alt-Rock Stars Rehearse for the 2005 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Watch Them Watch Us: A History of Breaking the “Fourth Wall” in Film

in Comedy, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2013

Remem­ber that scene in Nashville, when Kei­th Car­ra­dine sings “I’m Easy,” and every woman in the club thinks he’s speak­ing direct­ly to her?

Break­ing the fourth wall—also known as direct address—can have the same effect on a film­go­ing audi­ence. The com­pi­la­tion video above makes it clear that actors love it too. Break­ing from con­ven­tion can tele­graph an unim­peach­able cool, à la John Cusack in High Fideli­ty, or afford a vet­er­an scenery chew­er like Samuel L. Jack­son the oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn the hog loose. It’s most often deployed in the ser­vice of com­e­dy, but a stone-cold killer can make the audi­ence com­plic­it with a wink.

Screen­writer and jour­nal­ist Leigh Singer pulled footage from 54 films for this mash up, and freely admits that time con­straints left some favorites on the cut­ting room floor. What would you add, if you hap­pened to have Mar­shall McLuhan right here?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Rob­bie Cooper’s Video Project Immer­sion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTu­bers

The Film Before the Film: An Intro­duc­tion to the His­to­ry of Title Sequences in 10 Min­utes

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is that rare Gen­er­a­tion X‑er who did­n’t see Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off until 2013. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Power of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

in Film | April 23rd, 2013

Few liv­ing film­mak­ers have proven as able to spin their obses­sions into cin­e­mat­ic gold as Quentin Taran­ti­no. The most obvi­ous of these spring from film­go­ing itself — he’s rein­vent­ed and con­tin­ues to rein­vent so many of his favorite tech­niques from genre pic­tures of all eras and nations — but it does­n’t take an obses­sion with Taran­ti­no to find oth­ers. His sweep­ing, often motor­mouthed­ly expressed ideas about vio­lence in mod­ern soci­ety will give film schol­ars plen­ty to write about for decades to come; those of baser inter­ests might find some sat­is­fac­tion track­ing the direc­tor’s pen­chant for shots of wom­en’s feet. And any­one who thrilled, ear­ly in Pulp Fic­tion, to John Tra­vol­ta and Samuel Jack­son’s con­ver­sa­tion about what the French call a Quar­ter Pounder with cheese knows that he also must main­tain a deep per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al inter­est in food.

Fur­ther­ing this very spe­cif­ic sub­field of Quentin Taran­ti­no Stud­ies, Dan Good­baum has edit­ed togeth­er the video above, which com­piles images from notable food scenes in Taran­ti­no’s work. (Grant­land’s Zach Dionne cat­a­logued twen­ty of them here.) Over it, we hear a seg­ment from Elvis Mitchell inter­view­ing Taran­ti­no on his radio show, The Treat­ment. Mitchell, ace noticer of his film­mak­ing guests’ themes, tricks, and tics, men­tions to Taran­ti­no “how food is used for pow­er in your movies.” We then see and hear about the mean­ing of, among oth­er comestibles, the burg­er in Pulp Fic­tion, the nachos in Death Proof, the rice in Kill Bill Vol­ume 2 , the strudel in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, and all the sweets (tak­en from Leonar­do DiCapri­o’s real eat­ing habits) in Djan­go Unchained. “When you watch Jack­ie Brown,” Taran­ti­no says, “you want a screw­driv­er.” We see a shot of the drink, albeit dom­i­nat­ed by Patri­cia Arquet­te’s feet. But that’s anoth­er video.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no from Below

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Richard Feynman Introduces the World to Nanotechnology with Two Seminal Lectures (1959 & 1984)

in Physics, Technology | April 23rd, 2013

In Decem­ber of 1959, Richard Feyn­man gave a talk called “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at an annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety at Cal­tech. In this famous lec­ture, Feyn­man laid the con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tions for the field now called nan­otech­nol­o­gy when he imag­ined a day when things could be minia­tur­ized — when huge amounts of infor­ma­tion could be encod­ed onto increas­ing­ly small spaces, and when machin­ery could be made con­sid­er­ably small­er and more com­pact. He asked his audi­ence:

I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a prac­ti­cal way, but I do know that com­put­ing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of lit­tle wires, lit­tle ele­ments, and by lit­tle, I mean lit­tle?

Although some have ques­tioned the degree to which Feyn­man influ­enced the rise of nan­otech­nol­o­gy, his lec­ture is still seen as a sem­i­nal event in the short his­to­ry of the nano field. It’s impor­tant enough that, 25 years lat­er, Feyn­man was invit­ed to give an updat­ed ver­sion of “There’s Plen­ty of Room at the Bot­tom” at a week­long sem­i­nar held at the Esalen Insti­tute in Octo­ber, 1984.

This time around, he called his talk “Tiny Machines.” And while stick­ing close to the 1959 script, Feyn­man’s revised lec­ture shows what tech­no­log­i­cal advances had been made since he first out­lined his vision for a nano world. You can watch the full 79 minute talk above.

Final­ly, since we’re talk­ing about things nano, let me leave you with this — Stephen Fry’s 2010 primer on nanoscience. Pro­duced in part­ner­ship with Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, NANO YOU was named the best short film at the Scin­e­ma Sci­ence Film Fes­ti­val and it does a pret­ty good job of explain­ing the nano world in 17 short min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cor­nell (1964)

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Ani­ma­tion

A Cult Classic: William Shatner Sings Elton John’s “Rocket Man” at 1978 SciFi Awards Show

in Music, Sci Fi | April 22nd, 2013

Start­ing in the 1960s, William Shat­ner, rid­ing high on his Star Trek fame, began his idio­syn­crat­ic musi­cal career. With his 1968 con­cept album, The Trans­formed Man, the actor gave us the first taste of his musi­cal schtick. He would­n’t sing songs. He would speak them, often in a melo­dra­mat­ic, exag­ger­at­ed fash­ion. Just lis­ten to his ver­sions of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” and “Mr. Tam­bourine Man” to see what I mean.

Four decades lat­er, the Shat has­n’t changed his style. In 2011, he released a pop­u­lar ver­sion of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” (watch below) on his space-themed album, Seek­ing Major Tom. But real­ly, if you want to expe­ri­ence the high water­mark of Shat­ner’s musi­cal work, you need to beam your­self back to 1978. That’s when the actor host­ed The Sat­urn Awards (essen­tial­ly the Oscars for sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy & hor­ror films) and “sang” a ver­sion of “Rock­et Man,” the 1972 song co-writ­ten by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. It’s Taupin who intro­duces Shat­ner, and Karen Black who intro­duces Taupin.

As you will see (above), the broad­cast used chro­ma key video tech­niques to por­tray three dif­fer­ent images of Shat­ner, each of which rep­re­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent part of the Rock­et Man’s char­ac­ter. Now a cult clas­sic, Shat­ner’s per­for­mance has been par­o­died over the years by Beck, Fam­i­ly Guy, and Chris Elliot on a 1992 episode of Late Night with David Let­ter­man, among oth­ers. You can find a new record­ing of “Rock­et Man” on Seek­ing Major Tom.

Final­ly, if you’re won­der­ing who brought home the hard­ware from the ’78 Sat­urn Awards, it was George Burns, Jodie Fos­ter, Star Wars and Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind.